The large scale production of compounds which are based, at least in part, on a dipeptide intermediate requires the ready availability of large quantities of the dipeptide intermediate at low cost. Dipeptides of virtually any amino acids may be synthetically prepared for this use, however, synthesis of the dipeptide can be time consuming and costly which reduces the efficiency of product production and increases production costs. These disadvantages are particularly important to very large scale production of the dipeptide intermediate-based compounds.